This weekend we took a trip over to the
Brian Piccolo park; a well-manicured park in the middle of Cooper City (FL), which contains a multitude of sports grounds, a velodrome, and cycling tracks. It also contains a whole bunch of
Burrowing Owls (
Athene cunicularia) who, safe inside their carefully roped-off burrows, don't seem to give two hoots (yes, I'm hilarious) about passersby with cameras.
I honestly hadn't held out much hope of seeing these birds, but I'm starting to get the idea that wildlife sightings in the US are somewhat more reliable than back home, and an awful lot of the wildlife just doesn't care about random people wandering up to them. So, we had a very successful afternoon with the birds before the sun set! They have fantastically expressive little faces too which makes them brilliant subjects.
 |
| Burrowing owls make their homes in old rodent burrows, essentially making it a lazy version of the Atlantic puffin which actually digs its own burrow-nest. |
 |
| Chilling on one leg |
A few of the birds seemed to have the posing down to a fine art:
 |
| The all-the-way-over-the-shoulder runway pose. |
 |
| Blue steel. |
Others had less composure:
 |
| OMG! |
 |
| OMG I HAVE A BEAK! |
 |
| OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? |
The rest just seemed happy to relax and enjoy the evening:
